Amaurot
Chapter 10: Taking Sides
"Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."
T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Pub, Oxford, 2002
Glass had carefully avoided their questions for the past few minutes, overriding them with her insistence that she buy them drinks. The red-haired girl had kept up a wary position by her left shoulder, almost like some kind of bodyguard, glowering at them with blatant mistrust. They'd ended up at a table in another courtyard at the back of the pub, sheltered by a roof of clear plastic on a frame of heavy wooden beams, a brazier spitting dully next to them in the thin rain.
They settled themselves around the table: Glass and her friend on one side, with their backs to one of the high medieval walls that separated the pub from the adjoining college, the Starfleet crew on the other, backs to the brazier. The girl slammed their drinks down in front of them (when pressed, Picard had asked for tea, Crusher for water and Troi for orange juice) and then pulled her own cider close to herself, glaring over it as if defying them to try to spike it. Glass tore open the packet of crisps and pushed it to the centre of the table invitingly, offering them a slightly too convivial smile.
"So," she said, "Let's talk about this like civilised people."
Picard leant forward over the table. "Dr Glass, time is of the essence. It's vitally important that you accompany us."
"You'll forgive us if we don't immediately believe everything you're saying," snapped the red-haired girl. "So how about a bit of information for us, right? We get to know what's going on, and then we decide if we think going off with you is the right thing to do about it."
Glass put an arm around her friend's shoulders. "I'm with Cass. Tell me what's been happening to me, and then I'll see if I trust you. Tell me what I'm becoming." Her voice faltered slightly, and the girl reached up and squeezed her hand reassuringly.
Picard glanced around the courtyard. Nobody was too close to them, not at the adjacent tables, but still... "I suggest we adjourn to a more private place."
Glass stabbed a finger at him vehemently. "No. We talk here."
"Look, it's not like anyone's gonna think something's up. I've been sitting around here talking about being a vampire and running an international conspiracy, and nobody batted an eyelid. Talking about cyborgs and stuff isn't gonna get you noticed, they'll just think 'oh, it's those bloody roleplayers again'," Cass pointed out.
Picard stared at them dubiously. "Nevertheless, these matters are extremely sensitive..."
"Look, we'll tell you what we know and then you tell us what you know. My best mate's turning into a cyborg, right? Got that? Now you tell us why!"
The twentry-first century girl's eyes were bright with fear and indignation. Dr Glass tightened her arm about Cass' shoulders. "Cass is part of this. She's seen everything, all the implanted technology. She was there when it was actually coming through- "
The younger woman smiled shakily. "And bloody freaky it was, too."
"She needs answers as much as I do. I suggest you start giving them." Her pint of dark stout was forgotten, barely touched. The manufactured warmth and charm was fading, leaving behind something as cool and silky as polished steel and almost commanding. For an odd moment, Picard was reminded of Hugh.
Crusher leant forward urgently. "Dr Glass, I need to know how much of the Borg technology has regrown itself. I'm going to have to conduct some medical tests -"
"There's no bloody way you're sticking Anastasia in a lab and prodding her! If you didn't know what the tech was gonna do, you shouldn't of bloody well put it in her!" Cass leapt indignantly to her feet, spilling her drink as she reached over the table to gesticulate violently in Crusher's face.
Glass reached out and touched the girl's arm. "Cass, you're leaping to conclusions again. That's not good."
Crusher stared the girl down. "Listen to me. We didn't put anything in her. She was assimilated into the Borg Collective, made into a cyborg and wired into their hive mind. She escaped, we're not sure how. The implants went dormant, but now they're regrowing themselves. I just hope we've found her before the transformation becomes irreversible."
"Bloody hell... Cyborgs with hive minds? How the bloody hell did this fail to make the papers? The bloody remote-controlled cyborg rats blew up enough of a furore, let alone if someone was doing this with humans."
Picard and Troi shared a glance. Crusher's outburst had pushed them very close to the line, but there was really no point in any further deception. Glass needed to know about her own species, and the girl, Cass, knew too much already. He looked over at them both, as Cass slowly sat back down.
"You haven't heard about them because Earth hasn't contacted them yet. The first contact Earth has with the Borg is sixty years from now."
"Gods. I can't cope. Not just cyborgs, but time-travelling alien cyborgs from the future? Too much weird in one dose." The young woman's belligerence had crumbled under shock, leaving her looking suddenly very pale and very scared.
Glass slid her arm around Cass' shoulders again, pulling her comfortingly closer. "So... why am I turning into one of them now?"
"We really don't know," Picard confessed. "You were last heard of in 2367, on the other side of the galaxy. We have no idea how you got to Earth in 2002."
"I was wondering... I have no idea either. I have no memories before 1990, although some things I learned subsequently... felt more as if I was remembering than learning. Does that make any sense?"
"There seem to be some blocks on your memory, removing your recollections of having been part of the Collective as well as your human life before that. They're weakening now, and that's why we have to help you," Crusher said urgently.
"I see. Do I have some trauma in my past that's going to cripple me when I remember it? If so, it's pretty public-spirited of you all to hop in your time machine and come back to help me." A faint, cynical smile twitched at Glass' pale lips.
"As it happens, Dr Glass, this mission isn't entirely for your benefit."
"Thought not, somehow. Let me guess - Earth is at war with this Borg Collective, and you want to be around when I start remembering its military secrets? Although I'm not sure why you'd think I'd betray my own people, and if you were the sort of people who'd torture the information out of me, you'd've started already." The smile became wider and more deeply cynical.
"No," Picard said firmly. Although it was true, that Starfleet would want to pick over Glass for information, just as they would with Hugh... "You have information about the location of a device, a very powerful weapon, abandoned by a very old and powerful civilisation. The Borg Collective is attempting to access your memories and find it."
Glass simply kept smiling coolly, her eyes betraying no flicker of humour. "I know, I contacted one of them. And so are you. But I still don't understand why you want me to betray my own people."
"They're not your people!" Crusher said, leaning forward, meeting Glass' steady green stare. "Nobody is born Borg. They abduct members of other species and forcibly transform them into their own. They conquer whole civilisations, destroy their cultures and convert their citizens into mindless drones!"
Glass got to her feet. "You'll forgive me if I fail to buy into the standard war propaganda. I think I'll take my chances with my own kind."
She turned and swept off, Cass trotting uncertainly after her.
"We've lost her," Crusher said bitterly.
"She's right, you know," Troi sighed. "She doesn't have any reason to trust us or believe us. For all she knows, the Federation is no better than the Cardassians or the Romulans, and the Borg are a group of slandered dissidents."
Picard's expression hardened. "Then how do we convince her?"
A flicker of hope shone in Troi's eyes. "Hugh. We need to get Hugh to talk to her."
*******
Geostationary Orbit, 2002
"Hugh, that's a Borg scout ship!" La Forge almost shouted.
The young Borg shot a brief, exasperated look at him. "I know!" He leamt forwards intently over the consoles, slender white fingers moving across the controls with inhuman speed and precision.
La Forge moved up beside him, glancing over his armoured shoulder. "What are you doing?"
"I'm trying to lock the phasers onto it, so that I can destroy it before it reaches Earth. Geordi -" the Borg youth looked up, gaze meeting La Forge's urgently "- I need you to set the phaser frequency to remodulate automatically. We need to damage it as much as possible as quickly as possible."
La Forge dropped back to his friend's side, performing the standard modifications on the tactical console. A flash of envy of Hugh's effortless understanding of technology surfaced briefly, then was buried under fear of the implications of this new threat. Earth was still divided into nation-states, still in the thrall of paranoia and war. It would only take one nuclear power to misinterpret the Borg presence as an attack by one of the others, and the Third World War would be sparked off prematurely. And that was as nothing compared to the threat the Borg themselves posed, the threat to the Federation's entire future and the galaxy's as well if they took Glass...
He forced the fears back, and completed his task, dropping back from the console with a nod to Hugh. The cyborg's face was perfectly calm and focused as he keyed in the last few commands, as the shuttle decloaked for a second and the phaser beam slammed into the small cube.
The other ship's course towards Earth halted, as it hung in the blackness, maintaining its position relative to the briefly-glimpsed shuttle.
"Scanning for us. We've revealed ourselves as a threat," Hugh's tone was almost emotionless, the barest edge of controlled concern overlaying the information. His organic hand keyed in two commands within fractions of a second, his gaze never leaving the screen; the cloak flickered down again, and another phaser blast hit the scout ship.
The dull greyish cube glided closer to them, away from the Earth. La Forge noted a shimmer of greenish light at the edge of the viewscreen, moving towards them. Hugh's gaze shifted for a second, following the human's. "Polaron beam. Probably calibrated to detect cloaked energy signatures. It's a standard tactic."
His line of sight flicked rapidly back to the cube. "We'll get one more shot before they detect us. Geordi, route all power through the shuttle's deflector array."
"You mean-"
"It very nearly worked for the Enterprise. With the modifications I've made, it ought to work for the shuttle."
La Forge leant over his console, frantically stabbing in the commands, then looked up to meet Hugh's cooly urgent stare. Before he could even speak, the renegade Borg entered one more command on the console, and the scoutship was pierced by a sharp blue phaser beam. For a second the Borg craft hung there, as the energy beam slammed into it.
A flare of cold greenish light, and the small cube was ripped into a silent storm of dull metal shards.
*******
The Back Streets, Oxford, 2002
Anastasia Glass strode from the pub courtyard into the back alleyway, a thin rain silvering her wild black hair. Under the black iron gas lamp, she turned a sharp left into another alley, following it south.
"Anastasia? Hang on a sec, let me catch up!" Cass ran round the corner and down the alleyway, eventually drawing level with her friend.
"Where are we going?"
"Philosophically or geographically?"
"Oh, funny. This is so not the time for naff puns. So where are we going, really?"
"Home, via the Radcliffe Camera and George Street."
"So not the direct route, right? S'not gonna lose them. They're tracking you."
"I need to think. Walking helps me think."
"Right." Cass looked down for a second, then back up at her friend.
"Did you mean all that stuff? About taking your chances with your own kind."
"Yes, I meant it."
"Oh." Cass bit her lip. "Then humans aren't... you're not thinking of yourself as..."
"I meant they're not my kind. I severely doubt this Borg Collective is either. You're my kind. You're Jordan College, Oxford, a quizzer. I suspect the bloke in my dream is my kind too, if he deigns to show his face again."
"Right. so by 'your kind' you just mean, 'your sort of person', cunningly phrased so that both sides think you mean the other side so's you can start some kind of bidding war?"
"Close. I'm not planning on starting any sort of bidding war, just in keeping both sides on the hop until I can work out what's really going on without all the propaganda and carefully misleading information."
"Right. And how are you planning on doing that?"
"The bloke in my dream..."
"Thought it might come down to your mysterious cyborg blokey, somehow..."
"No, seriously. I have a feeling he knows what's going on. And I have a feeling he's my kind of person, too."
"I don't know, flash of cheekbones and you're anybody's."
"This really isn't just a looks thing. This is a..."
"You're lost and lonely and bewildered and he's been being sympathetic thing, right? Been there, done that, got the miserable rebound relationship to prove it."
Anastasia suddenly swung round to confront her friend. "Cass, just trust me, okay? I think I trust him."
"Anastasia, you've never even bloody met him. You don't even know for sure he even exists outside your own head."
Anastasia's lips tightened, as she stared out down the alley to the square beyond, to where the dome of the Radcliffe Camera was silhouetted against the leaden sky.
"No. I don't. You're right."
Cass' indignation slowly dribbled away, leaving concern and guilt. "Anastasia, look, I'm sorry. You were really counting on him, weren't you?"
A long pause, bleak and grey as the rainclouds. "Yes, I was."
"Well... there's nothing to say you won't be able to. But you might not, and there's got to be a contingency plan for if you can't. What I'm saying is..." Cass took a deep breath. "Best to plan as if it's you and me versus the universe. Then if it's not, we get help we weren't counting on. But that's better than counting on help you might not get, right?"
"Yes. You're right."
"Okay." Cass paused, watching uncertainly as cold rain trickled down the older woman's suddenly masklike, emotionless face. "C'mon. We'll go home, and we'll plan."
*******
Geostationary Orbit, 2002
La Forge approached Hugh cautiously. "Looks like your modifications worked."
The young Borg glanced at him for a second, his expression unreadable, showing neither triumph nor grief. "Yes. They did." His gaze flickered back to the control panel.
La Forge dropped back into his old seat, still watching his friend. Hugh's rapid shifts of emotional register were confusing him. One minute, there would be such a vivid, transparent play of thoughts and feelings across his pale face, and then all of a sudden the sensitive young man would be buried behind a stoic Borg mask. It was as if he didn't know how to deal with his emotions other than repressing them or being consumed by them.
"The sensors picked up a surge of power just before the ship exploded. It was a very close match to the transporter activation signature I remember the Collective using." Hugh's voice was mechanically calm still, with the slightest vibration of anxiety at its edge.
"You mean they've beamed down? After Glass?"
"It would be the logical thing to do. If they can capture Glass and release her memory blocks, then they can use her to contact the Collective and pass on the knowledge of the Machine's whereabouts. After that, they will probably self-destruct. Taking her with them." There was a definite taint of anger and pain colouring the last phrase, contaminating the cyborg's icy calm.
"Then the Captain could be facing Borg down there."
"I'm scanning for Borg energy signatures. They may not have found her yet." Hugh turned back to the sensor display, his deathmask composure resumed.
******
The House in Jericho, Oxford, 2002
By the time they reached Anastasia's house, the rain was coming down in earnest in a steady, stinging curtain, plastering Cass' scarlet hair to her skull and turning Anastasia's into soggy Medusa-like tendrils. The older woman had remained silent as they'd walked back, deep in thought or despair, Cassandra wasn't sure which.
Cass stepped to one side to allow Anastasia to open the back door. The space under the kitchen window normally occupied by Shazia's decrepit bike was empty, suggesting that Anastasia's housemate was still at the lab, or else had gone drinking with her colleagues.
Anastasia pulled her keys out of her pocket mechanically and fumbled with the lock, eventually pushing the door open as they trudged through into the kitchen.
Cass glanced around. "Look, sit down. I'll make tea, and we'll plan. Right?"
Anastasia, unresisting, allowed herself to be steered over to a chair at the kitchen table. A quick ferret through the cupboards located a packet of Jaffa Cakes and Anastasia's stash of Earl Grey teabags, and Cass set about making tea.
"So, what are we going to do?"
Silence. Despairing or thinking, she couldn't tell.
"What about contacting these Collective sort of people, and asking them for their side of the story?"
No response. Not even a vague thinking kind of noise.
"Although, you must admit, it's not exactly a nice fluffy sort of name. Borg Collective, I mean. Has all sorts of nasty cyber-totalitarian communist kind of overtones. Mind you, I could have it all wrong, they could be a bunch of lovely happy techno-hippies, but somehow I doubt it..."
She was well aware that Anastasia couldn't hear her over the racket of the boiling kettle, but babbling for the sake of babbling was less scary than giving in to that horrible empty silence.
"So I'm thinking, is the future just some big sort of Cold War all over again? Capitalists with shiny even teeth and apple pie versus scary hi-tech commies? Cos if so, then we're going for the third side. We're Switzerland. Got chocolate, watches and H.R. Giger. Suits me."
The kettle clicked off, and a mechanical whirring and hissing became audible in the sudden silence. Cass swung round, the back of her neck prickling with liquid-nitrogen horror, the kettle still in her hands.
There were two of them coming through the doorway, creatures like Anastasia had become, pallid and armoured, eyepieces clicking efficiently across the room.
Anastasia's head jerked up, making eye contact with one of the creatures. "We will comply," she said, her voice flat and emotionless. She got to her feet, then walked over to them and dropped to her knees before them. The look in her eyes was a bleak mixture of despair and relief. as she pushed her hair away from her neck.
The one Anastasia knelt before reached out with a grey hand, as dully gleaming tendrils of metal slid from its knuckles, as the other crossed the room to confront Cass.
And in a raw surge of blind, protective rage, Cass flung the boiling contents of the kettle into its face, then seized the breadknife from the rack behind her and hurled herself at the one threatening her friend.